More than a year after announcing that it’d be selling off its appliance division to Swedish company Electrolux for a few billion dollars, General Electric is pulling the plug on the deal. [More]
appliances
What You Should Know About Rent-To-Own Retail Models: Extra Costs, High Interest Rates
By 7.1.15
Rent-to-own stores offer cash-strapped consumers the ability to take home a new refrigerator, living room furniture set and hundred of other items by allowing them to pay a little each month. But, as we’ve reported in the past, what seems like a convenient years-long payment plan often adds hundreds – even thousands – of dollars to the price tag of a product. To ensure potential customers of rent-to-own stores know what they’re getting into, our colleagues at Consumer Reports put together a helpful video spelling out the potential dangers of such retail models. [More]
This Smart Oven Is Smarter Than You Are, Streams Video Of Your Dinner
By 6.9.15
We remain cynical but open-minded about the idea of smart appliances. What we’ve seen so far isn’t all that impressive: from the potential for kitchen appliances to launch cyberattacks to an incredibly stupid WiFi-enabled drip coffeemaker, we aren’t really sold on the idea yet. News of a new oven available for pre-order that is able to sense what you’re cooking and automatically determine how to cook it has us intrigued. [More]
The Best & Worst Store-Brand Deals At Lowe’s, Home Depot & Sears
By 2.26.15
Need to buy a snowblower, light bulbs, and some paint? You might figure, “Oh, I’ll just head to Home Depot (or Lowe’s, or Sears) and get it all done in the same trip.” But just because these stores all offer one-stop shopping for most home goods, price and quality of store-brand and private label products can vary greatly depending on the retailer. [More]
Mr. Coffee Introduces The Stupidest Smart Coffeemaker On The Market
By 1.26.15
I get annoyed when an electronic gadget has functions that you can only access through the remote control, so I am not a candidate to buy the Mr. Coffee Smart Optimal Brew. It’s a very nice new network-connected drip coffee machine that you can program remotely from your smartphone. The problem: you can only program it from your smartphone. [More]
Where Do People Buy The Stuff They Used To Buy At Sears?
By 11.26.14
Many American consumers have sworn off shopping at Sears and Kmart, their local stores have closed, or they have just forgotten that the chains exist. Business that once went to Kmart now goes to discount store competitors Target and Walmart, logically enough, but where do Americans go for the things that they once bought at Sears? [More]
Electrolux Buys General Electric Appliance Division For $3.3B
By 9.8.14
Whenever someone mentions a General Electrics appliance the first thing that comes to mind is 30 Rock‘s Jack Donaghy and the pocket microwave, “The Funcooker.” Of course neither of those things really have anything to do with Electrolux’s deal to buy the GE appliance business, but it’s never the wrong time to reminisce about Liz Lemon and the gang. [More]
How One Appliance Store Unleashed The Streisand Effect On Itself
By 7.28.14
The New York Times’ “Haggler” column is a standard consumer problem-solving column like many newspapers have, but backed with the brand recognition and vast readership of the NYT. A recent column about a financing dispute between a Texas woman and an appliance store could have just been a mundane account of a dispute over interest payments on a refrigerator, but the company refused to talk to the Times. At all. [More]
Portable Air Conditioners: Not So Portable, Don’t Cool The Air
By 6.12.14
The concept of a portable air conditioner implies that the device is portable, and that you can cool a room with it. They would be a wonderful tool if this were were true, but tests by our breezy and cool colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports show that they compare unfavorably to window-mounted air conditioners in pretty much every way, and you might be better off with no air conditioner at all. [More]
Best Buy Delivers Your Appliance For Free, Power Cord For $70
By 6.11.14
Reader Christopher decided that it was time to buy a new dryer, largely because Best Buy had a great sale and offers free delivery for appliances. It sounds like that might be, indeed, the best buy. Only when he put all of the needed parts in his virtual cart, he noticed something strange. He had to pay an extra delivery charge…for the power cord. [More]
Samsung Indifferent About Exploding Washing Machines
By 4.3.14
Maybe my standards are low, but I do expect my home appliances not to explode. When that happened to one Missouri couple, they called up Samsung for help. Since the couple had owned the machine for 14 months, the warranty was up and Samsung didn’t particularly care. They had spent $1000 on the machine, and expected more from Samsung. [More]
Toaster Ovens: Good Tiny Ovens, Bad At Making Toast
By 2.24.14
Do you eat toast? Our lightly browned colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports spend a lot of time testing things that you might not think of to test. For example: the quality of toast produced in toasters vs. that produced in toaster ovens. Turns out that you’re better off with a plain old toaster, unless the “oven” part is important to you. [More]
Naked Man Rescued From Washing Machine Is A Helpful Reminder That Appliances Are Not Toys
By 1.6.14
Did people in Australia not watch Punky Brewster growing up? Because surely if one Aussie man had seen the episode where Cherie gets stuck in a refrigrator during hide-and-seek (spoiler alert: SHE ALMOST DIES!) he never would’ve climbed naked into a washing machine and expect any kind of positive result. [More]
Hurry And Pick Up A Top Snowblower Before The Snow Comes
By 11.26.13
If you live in a part of the country that gets snow, you might be thinking about buying a snowblower…um, sometime in the next few hours if you live in the Northeast. Fortunately, our bundled-up colleagues over at Consumer Reports has already done the heavy plowing for you and picked out the best machines on the market. [More]
Organize Your Fridge To Prevent Food Spoilage
By 11.18.13
There might be a perfectly shaped little spot for a gallon or half-gallon of milk in your refrigerator, but that doesn’t mean you should keep it there. The door and the very front of refrigerator shelves are the warmest parts of the fridge, since the parts closest to the door make the most contact with warm air. Keep milk and eggs toward the back. [Consumer Reports] [More]
6 Home Appliances Most Likely To Self-Immolate
By 8.6.13
Kitchen appliances make our lives more convenient and our meals more delicious, but they’re also dangerous. Dangerous? Ordinary appliances start tens of thousands of fires in United States homes every year. Our colleagues down the hall at ShopSmart rounded up some common causes of appliance fires and warned us all. [More]
How To Pick Laundry Appliances With Features That Are Actually Useful
By 7.9.13
If you’ve never bought your own appliances before or the dryer you bought during the Carter administration finally died, you might find the array of features available on modern washers and dryers daunting and scary. The problem is that the machine with the most features isn’t necessarily the best one. [More]
How To Find The Very Best Air Conditioner For Your Home
By 7.3.13
We can tell when a heat wave strikes this great nation, because classic Consumerist posts on calculating what size air conditioner you need suddenly surge in popularity. There are handy charts that give you a rough guide, but surely those calculations aren’t the same for someone in Miami and someone in Boston. Enter Econofy. [More]
